Rutherford teen charged in international Catfish hoax faces new trouble

Alleging witness intimidation, federal prosecutors are seeking to revoke the bail of a Rutherford teenager already accused of luring a friend into an online relationship with a fictitious girl he created on Facebook and later making a false kidnapping report about the girl to a U.S. embassy overseas.

Prosecutors want U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael A. Hammer to jail Andriy Mykhaylivskyy, 18, for allegedly violating the terms of his November release on $50,000 bail on the original charges by attempting to contact a witness — the boy he allegedly duped.

In Newark Wednesday, a public defender representing Mykhaylivskyy disputed the government’s claim that he had violated the bail order and asked for additional time to present a witness. The government said it also needed time to prepare a surveillance video. Hammer granted the requests and set a Jan. 23 hearing date.

Mykhaylivskyy was arrested in August by agents of the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service after allegedly admitting the hoax to investigators.

He is accused in a criminal complaint of making false statements to an official at the U.S. embassy in Moldova, last July 2.

Using Facebook, Twitter, texting, and other electronic means, Mykhaylivskyy created a fictitious girl named Kate Brianna Fulton and, posing as her, started an online relationship with a male classmate as a “joke,” authorities said. Mykhaylivskyy was visiting the Ukraine in July when he allegedly telephoned the U.S. embassy in Moldova and, assuming an alias, reported that his girlfriend, Kate Fulton, had been kidnapped in Bulgaria on June 28 and that her mother had received a $50,000 ransom demand, according to the complaint.

The duped boy, meanwhile, called the U.S. embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria a few days later to report that he had received text messages from the kidnapped girl.

U.S. authorities alerted Bulgarian police who checked with hotels, hostels and other lodgings while border police conducted searches of incoming passenger records.

During the brief hearing in Newark on Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara F. Merin told Hammer that in December, Mykhaylivskyy entered a retail store at a mall where the boy works and made eye contact with him. He then proceeded to follow the boy to the back of the store, she said.

Mykhaylivskyy doesn’t deny that he was in the store, just the circumstances of the encounter, said Assistant Federal Public Defender Candace Hom, declining to elaborate after the hearing. She said a friend of Mykhaylivskyy would testify on his behalf.

Hammer reminded Mykhaylivskyy of the conditions of his release, noting, “I fully expect and demand that you comply with them between now and the hearing.”